by Jacqueline Marino
wo days before
Halloween and a full two weeks before The Orpheum Theatre becomes
a haunted 19th-century opera house, a dozen stagehands are
stripping the stage bare. The curtain has been taken down, the
sound equipment delicately disassembled, and the lights stacked
on racks near the spacious loading dock, ready for transport to a
storage unit across town.
There's no time or space to spare. In a few days, an entourage of 25 tractor-trailers rolls into town, packed with elaborate costumes and a portable Broadway set. With the help of 88 local stagehands, a traveling 40-person crew will erect a majestic gilded proscenium, adorn the near-naked stage with 2,700 yards of weighty Victorian-style drapes, and construct, as the crowning centerpiece, a glittering 1,000-pound chandelier that stands 10 feet tall on the stage.
When the curtain rises opening night, The Orpheum will finally be fit for a phantom.
It's taken three years
and $8.5 million to lure Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of
the Opera to this old vaudeville house. Phantom's
monstrous set and high-tech sound and lighting equipment could
not be crammed into a 70-year-old theatre built to showcase
burlesque entertainers and comedians. The Orpheum's stage had to
be deepened, its sound and light booths revamped, and the
dressing rooms and orchestra pit expanded. A special steel
support had to be built into the ceiling just to hold the
chandelier.
Four years have passed since Orpheum president Pat Halloran first asked the city council to allocate $4 million for the theatre's renovation. Reluctant to sink more money into another downtown building, the council sent him away empty-handed. Halloran refused to give up, however, and succeeded in convincing the council to lend him the money eight months later.
Although Phantom promises to generate more than $5.5 million in ticket sales, its costs are astronomical. For instance, during Phantom's five-week run the theatre will be billed $15,000 for cleaning, $40,000 for programs, and $12,500 for utilities. Halloran expects it will take 20 years for The Orpheum to finish paying for the renovation. It's a large debt, all right, but one the theatre couldn't afford to avoid.
"If we didn't renovate, we would have been the only big city in North America without Phantom," says Halloran, sitting comfortably behind his cluttered desk, a shiny, gold mask pinned to his lapel. "It would have been a cultural sin."
To the casual observer, spending $8.5 million for a five-week show looks a bit extravagant. But even if you could put a price tag on the spectacle, the mystery, and the music of Phantom, it would still be impossible to measure the show's economic and artistic impact on Memphis. For five weeks, 100,000 people will be drawn from at least 27 states to see this production. Some will take advantage of Phantom packages at The Peabody, dine from the Phantom menu at Ciao Cucina, and drink Phantom martinis at Breckenridge Brewery.
But even after the chandelier is packed
away and the trucks have rambled off to the next venue, the
aftershocks of Phantom will continue to ripple through the
city. For better or for worse, the age of the Broadway
mega-musical has finally arrived in Memphis, and every performing
arts organization in the city has braced for it.
Fearing the Phantom
Once Phantom-mania
hits Memphis, performing-arts organizations worry attendance at
their shows will suffer. Anything local groups do to jazz up
their marketing strategies during the important holiday season
will undoubtedly pale in comparison to the Phantom's
Broadway-sized blowout.
Most local performing-arts directors agree that Phantom benefits the city and The Orpheum. But there's a real possibility that casual arts-goers who might spring for only one major show a year will choose Phantom over a local production.
"We had been told that in every city it came into, it hurt the local arts community. So we took precautions," says Martha Ellen Maxwell, executive director of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. The symphony bought half the house for the November 13th performance. By reselling the tickets at slightly higher prices, it hopes to recoup some of the losses it might sustain because of decreased sales during Phantom's run.
The show, which plays from November 12th through December 13th, has already adversely affected Ballet Memphis and Opera Memphis. The ballet had to move Nutcracker, its most financially important production, back a week and a half because it overlapped with Phantom's run. Opera Memphis started its season a month earlier than usual for the same reason.
"As far as the ballet goes, we're a little nervous about it," says Dorothy Gunther Pugh, Ballet Memphis founder and artistic director. "When our shows are backed against these shows, it's the local performing-arts organizations that take a quick beating."
"I have a problem with Phantom coming in and taking seven weeks of The Orpheum's time," says Michael Ching, general artistic director of Opera Memphis, which bought all of opening night and still has about one-third of the house left to sell. "It creates a problem of theatre availability. Since the [performing arts center in the] convention center hasn't been built yet, it's still the only game in town."
In Phantom's defense, Halloran insists the groups will eventually benefit from the show. In other cities, Phantom has been credited with carving out new audiences of theatre-goers and infusing arts communities with new patrons.
"It's going to take people away
from local theatres for five weeks," Halloran says.
"But for the next 10 years, it's going to draw people to
them."
The Phenomenon
Every single day, Phantom is playing to a sold-out crowd somewhere in the world. It's become one of the most successful Broadway musicals to ever hit the road, not just because of its ability to dazzle audiences everywhere, but because it makes so much money. In 10 years, the show has grossed $1.5 billion. In the U.S. alone, 17.5 million people have seen at least one of the three touring companies. And more than 6.5 million have seen it on Broadway.
There's no science to
account for Phantom's success. Some attribute it to the
spectacle quality of the show, the familiar music, or the
engagingly tragic storyline. In a time when television and movies
make it easy for theatregoers to feel entertained in their living
rooms, Phantom's appeal has been nothing less than
phenomenal.
"I think the show has all the components that make for a thrilling evening," says Alan Wasser, who has managed Phantom for the last 10 years. "The romantic story, a wonderful score, and all the elements of grandeur.
"In comparison to other musicals and touring shows, it reaches a broader audience. People come to Phantom who have never been to the theatre before."
The show first appeared on the London stage in 1986. After selling an unheard-of number of tickets, it debuted on Broadway two years later. At first, touring proved difficult because of the show's technical complexity. But now the touring companies bring in more money than the Broadway production.
In fact, the Phantom appeal is so strong that theatres throughout the country go to epic extremes to woo it. Because producer Cameron Mackintosh refuses to scale down the show from the Broadway version, Phantom will not come to a venue unless it can comfortably accommodate the show's massive set and high-tech equipment. With the brazenness of a national sports team, Phantom often requires communities to spend millions on massive theatre renovations.
"The Orpheum's renovation was a bit expensive," says Scott Hemeriling, Phantom's national press representative. "It's an old, beautiful building and they had to redo the whole backstage, the elevators, and they had to retrofit the grid and stage. It was quite extensive."
Once Phantom breaks in a market, other musical spectacles usually follow. Next year, The Orpheum is negotiating for several mega-shows that have proven themselves at the box office, including Miss Saigon and Beauty and the Beast. The shows often revisit markets too. Phantom is scheduled for a second Nashville run in February.
At the rate Memphians have been gobbling up tickets, which range in cost between $17.50 to $65, Wasser expects Phantom to return to Memphis at some point for a second run itself. Three weeks before opening night, the show is 90 percent sold out. Sales are going so well that Phantom canceled a last-minute marketing blitz.
Wasser says Memphis "exploded like a firecracker." Out of the 35 cities it's toured, only tickets in Green Bay, Wisconsin, sold as quickly.
"Memphis is one of the markets
we're very happy to see as a market for touring shows," says
Wasser from his office in New York. "Few Broadway shows have
been able to play there longer than a single week. Now it will be
on the regular touring circuit for all the first-class
productions....If you can handle Phantom, you can handle
anything. Phantom will have a permanent impact."
The Mega-musical Revolution
Not everyone is romanticized by Phantom, of course. And many discount the supporters' claim that the show invigorates the performing-arts community. Phantom wows audiences. It doesn't necessarily instill in its audiences an appreciation for the performing arts.
"Phantom's an event. A very unique experience," says Jackie Nichols, founder and executive producer of Playhouse on the Square and Circuit Playhouse. "But if The Orpheum doesn't have another Phantom next year, its subscriptions will probably be down. I don't think it will create a massive new audience for the arts in this community."
For the most part, mid-sized theatres like The Orpheum are financially (rather than artistically) motivated in their efforts to attract these shows. A recent study commissioned by a coalition of New York theatre owners, producers, and unions found that mega-musicals and revivals are just about all Broadway's producing these days. It noted a disturbing lack of new, creative works being performed. With theatre production costs rising much faster than ticket price increases, producers gravitate toward musicals and revivals because they tend to be the safest investment.
The study "paints a picture of an industry with structural problems that invite comparison to the United States auto or steel industries in the 1970s," according to The New York Times, which was leaked a copy of the unreleased report from a commission member.
The Broadway Initiative Working Group, which commissioned the study, plans to use it to help organize a $10 million theatre fund for encouraging new works on Broadway. Still, Jack Goldstein, leader of the group, doesn't knock mega-musicals. Rather, he predicts the whole theatre industry will decline unless Broadway finds a way to showcase a variety of creative productions once again.
"Those musicals are an invention of American theatre, indigenous American theatre, that we should be proud of," he says. "But they do not have a positive enough impact for Broadway to grow."
Unless Broadway, the very nucleus of American theatre, starts producing more creative works, local and regional theatres will continue to present tried-and-true musicals and revivals because they promise immediate financial rewards, Goldstein says. The mega-musicals' ability to draw new audiences is eclipsed only by their tendency to alienate dedicated theatregoers who no longer "oooh" and "ahhh" the high-tech theatrics. From those audience members, the shows now evoke yawns, or even worry.
"It's a really negative sign when all they're running is these spectacles," Nichols says. "It's rare when an Angels in America comes along with real quality and can sustain itself...Not to demean Phantom, but theatre needs to be more substantive than that."